Invest Northern Ireland Contract Win

May 14, 2013

@UK PLC, the cloud ecommerce marketplace, is delighted to announce that it has won a competitive tender to provide Invest Northern Ireland ("Invest NI") with its Content Management System ("CMS"), delivered via @UK's local cloud technology. The 10 year contract is worth a total of £0.5 million, with £104k in the first year, including the budget for additional services and revenue.

This competitive contract win confirms the continued calibre of SiteGenerator CMS, the content management element of @UK's cloud-based ecommerce system first launched over 14 years ago. Ecommerce systems are generally weak at content management and content management systems weak at ecommerce. This contract win confirms @UK's leading position in both areas providing the company with a strong competitive advantage in the enterprise ecommerce market.

Late last year, Forrester Research sized the US B2B eprocurement market at $559 billion, being close to twice the size of the B2B ecommerce market, with much of that activity as yet unrealised. A separate study found that only 25 percent of B2B companies have an online presence. @UK with its leading technology, partners and global rollout plan can address both buy and sell sides of this significant global market.

There is also a significant market for local cloud technology, as evidenced by the launch last month of Pivotal Technology with a $105 million investment from General Electric to develop products that will exploit the local cloud market. A local cloud is where a large organisation with existing data centres uses cloud technology from other providers to improve the security, reliability and cost effectiveness of their local services. i.e. in the case of @UK, a technology transfer of the existing @UK technology to the organisation so that it can use the technology to run its local services.

@UK has an established cloud platform with over 1 million users and a G-Cloud framework that allows UK public sector bodies to purchase the @UK local cloud technology. The @UK Directors believe Invest NI's use of @UK local cloud technology for the Invest NI content management system and corporate intranet provides @UK with both the framework and reference site necessary for public sector and large enterprise sales.

@UK local cloud allows large organisations to benefit from the @UK cloud platform's ability to rapidly develop reliable applications running on a fully optimised established cloud platform that services millions of users in a secure manner from the lowest cost base of any major cloud platform. There are over 28 million unique visitors to the @UK platform and the cost per million visitors is an industry leading £70k per annum.

@UK is once again on the G-Cloud framework in the form of the G-Cloud 3 framework, which lasts for 1 year with services available for a further 2 years to create a 3 year agreement for customers.

Ronald Duncan Chairman of @UK commented, "This win with Invest NI confirms that our market leading enterprise ecommerce platform has a first class content management system. A contract win in the emerging local cloud space combined with our continuing inclusion in the G-Cloud framework puts us in a strong space in both markets."